Haunting Tales and Montreal History
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WIN 2 TICKETS TO HAUNTED MONTREAL! 👻
Growing up in New England, the paranormal surrounded me. We went on two school field trips to Salem where we visited old colonial schoolhouses. And once we grew older, we would sneak out to drink in the woods where several witches, hundreds of years earlier, had made their escape.
The paranormal also became a strong bonding point within my family. I have fond memories of scaring my grandmother alongside my brother in the London Dungeon, tickling her ankles with our shoes so she would think there were rats running across her feet. My dad, cousins, brother and I would make inappropriate jokes with each other as we learned about the ghosts of Gettysburg or the spirits who haunt Boston’s Omni Parker House.
So when I found out about Haunted Montreal’s tour in Old Port, I knew I had to go.I was able to take one of my closest friends with me, and we had a lot of fun listening to the variation of ghost stories told around Old Port. While our guide made a few cheesy jokes, the tour definitely focused more on the actual events than the dramatisations of the figures involved.
Haunted Montreal was founded in 2011 by historian and actor Donovan King to help put Montreal on the map as one of the most haunted cities in the country. He began giving the Haunted Mountain tour, a guided walk around the spookiest parts of Mont Royal.
The project soon began to expand. In 2015, King created the Haunted Montreal blog, dedicated to writing about haunted landmarks or ghost stories on the thirteenth of every month. This year, the Haunted Griffintown and Haunted Downtown tours were added to the register. Haunted Montreal was soon able to add both new actors and paranormal experts onto their team, with Dominique Desormeaux joining in 2019 to lead the company’s Paranormal Investigation tour.
While the Haunted Montreal curriculum mostly centers around ghost stories, they also delve a lot into the hidden histories in Montreal. Certain tours do focus more on the settlers’ sides of history, like the Haunted Tour of Griffintown, which largely discusses mob activity in the neighbourhood. However, both tours in Old Montreal and on the Mountain discuss the genocide committed by English and French settlers.
“Someone said once that [the Haunted Old Montreal tour] is kind of an anti-colonial tour that isn’t advertised as such. I’d say more that it’s a ghost tour, but the fact is, [using an anti-colonial mindset] is how history should be taught,” guide and Haunted Montreal general manager Jason C. McLean tells me. “With ghost stories, we have to talk about the history, and I think we’re telling the history in the right way…[researcher and scriptwriter Donovan King] thought that was very important.”
Haunted Montreal also gives Indigenous storytellers a chance to recount the ones who this history has impacted the most. Cree journalist Sophie-Claude Miller hosts a weekly Colonial Secrets of Old Montreal tour, which aims to show the genocidal history of both New France and Canada. Here, guests learn about stories often erased from history books. Unlike some of the ghost tours I’ve gone on in the past, Haunted Montreal focuses on all aspects of history, not only the ones impacted by white authors.
McLean’s favourite part of ghost tours is being able to share this hidden knowledge of the city with locals who don’t necessarily know the story of the ground they’re walking on. “While going out and enjoying Halloween, [Montreal residents] should also learn a bit about different parts of their city that they may not know already,” he says. “And they should experience the city in a way that they hadn’t thought of before.”
There are several tours and paranormal investigations running in the days leading up to Halloween, with the Haunted Mountain, the Haunted Pub Crawl, and the Haunted Old Montreal tours also run the night of. A paranormal investigation at the old site of the Saint-Antoine Cemetery will also be held on Halloween. All tours and investigations are run in English and French.
While the outdoor walking tours finish publicly at the end of November, the Haunted Pub Crawl runs every Sunday, year-round. Every tour besides the Pub Crawl and Haunted Mountain are wheelchair accessible.
The Haunted Old Montreal tours will run on Sunday, October 25th and Wednesday the 27th, as well as on Halloween. The Haunted Mountain tour will also run on the night of Halloween, with the Haunted Pub Crawl adding an extra date on the 31st on top of its usual Sunday date.
Along with the Saint-Antoine cemetery investigation on Halloween night, there will also be a paranormal investigation into the spirits of both the English colonial and New France eras on Thursday the 29th, and Friday the 30th. During these tours, guide Dominique Desormeaux teaches about ghost hunting history, equipment, with the group attempting to contact spirits with authentic paranormal equipment.
Sophie-Claude Miller’s Colonial Secrets tour, run on Saturdays through the end of November, will be exceptionally moved to Sunday, November 1st, and therefore will not be touring on Halloween. The Haunted Downtown and the Haunted Griffintown tours will also not be held on Halloween, with tour dates on Thursday the 29th and Friday the 30th, respectively.
McLean hopes that he can continue his work at Haunted Montreal and feel the thrill of knowledge and the undead. “I don’t know, you feel alive doing something like this,” he tells me. “Even talking about the dead, you feel alive.”
